U.S. appeals court sides with California school in T-shirt dispute

February 27, 2014|Reuters

By Laila Kearney

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 27 (Reuters) - San Francisco Bay-areahigh school officials did not violate the civil rights of fivestudents by demanding they remove T-shirts bearing images of theU.S. flag at an event celebrating the Mexican holiday of Cincode Mayo, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appealssaid school officials acted out of legitimate concerns ofviolence when they sent a handful of students home for refusingto change their American flag-embellished apparel.

"The panel held (that) given the history of prior events atthe school, including an altercation on campus, it wasreasonable for school officials to proceed as though the threatof a potentially violent disturbance was real," Judge MargaretMcKeown wrote in the unanimous opinion.

Live Oak High School in the town of Morgan Hill, south ofSan Francisco, had been experiencing gang-related tensions andracially charged altercations between white and Hispanicstudents at the time. School officials said they feared theimposition of American patriotic imagery by some students at anevent where other students were celebrating their pride in theirMexican heritage would incite fights between the two groups.

School staff at the May 5, 2010, event told flag-wearingstudents Daniel Galli, Austin Carvalho, Matt Dariano, DominicMaciel and Clayton Howard to reverse their shirts, take them offor go home. Four of the boys ultimately chose to leave for home.

The incident soon attracted widespread public attention. Theparents of three students later filed suit claiming the school'sactions had violated their children's federal and stateconstitutional rights to freedom of expression, equal protectionand due process, according to court documents.

Thursday's opinion upheld a decision by U.S. District JudgeJames Ware, who ruled in November 2011 that school officialswere reasonably fearful that the boys' clothing would inciteviolence.

Following the appeals hearing, plaintiffs attorney WilliamBecker, who represents the boys and their families, told theMorgan Hill Times that he was prepared to take the case to theU.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

"It's pretty incredible that the First Amendment rights ofstudents to express their patriotic views has to take thebackseat to the rights of students who want to celebrate anothernation," Becker told the paper.